Editorials
Bloody Disgusting’s Michael Pementel Replays the Top 10 Records of 2021!
This was a killer year for music across the board. I love a year where it’s challenging for me to put together a top 10 list; I initially start my process with a top 20 and then work my way to those really special records. It’s also exciting to share my personal top records with you all through Haunted Riffs! This column has been a real joy for me, and in 2022, I look forward to bringing you more features, interviews, and reviews.
A couple of notes before diving into my top picks: First, these are my top picks, and not an effort to say these are the best records of the year objectively. Also, while Haunted Riffs has involved a lot of metal, I’ve also included my favorite non-metal records.
Without further ado, here are my top 10 records of 2021!
10. Rob Zombie – The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy
With Zombie being one of the longest-running artists I’ve been listening to, The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy is one of my favorite records from him. It sounded like a great fusion of arena rock with some industrial touches and other fun musical flavors. In these sounds, Lunar Injection comes off to me like a fresh spin on Hellbilly Deluxe, with Zombie providing a range in tongue-in-cheek horror lyricism as the band delivers rocking metal cuts. You can read more of my thoughts regarding the record via my review.
9. John Carpenter with Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies – Lost Themes III: Alive After Death
Easily my favorite film composer of all time, John Carpenter always knows how to grab the listener’s attention. My love for Lost Themes III is very much the same when it comes to why I have enjoyed the previous Lost Themes records – John, Cody, and Daniel know how to create remarkable atmosphere. Their brilliant fusion of electronic, industrial, and rock are captivating, creating soundscapes that are dreamy and riveting.
Again, you can read my full review of the record for more.
8. The Body & BIG|BRAVE – Leaving None But Small Birds
To be real, while I sincerely appreciate and enjoy folk music, I can’t claim to be a veteran listener of the genre. That said, I am a huge fan of The Body and all their noise material, so when I heard they had a new record coming out – I was already on board. Having not experienced much of BIG|BRAVE prior, I didn’t know what to expect from Leaving None But Small Birds. But when I heard the record’s first single – I think this was the fastest pre-order I have ever jumped on in terms of music releases.
A stunning and grim display of folk instrumentation, creating a haunting experience that is beautiful and chilling.
7. Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready
When I first came across Lingua Ignota’s All Bitches Die, I knew I was listening to something that would forever change how I listen to music. She is the main reason I started listening to noise, and her follow-up LP Caligula is easily one of my all-time favorite records.
While the record involves some similar elements found among the past two albums, Sinner Get Ready is a whole other experience. Heartbreaking, angry, and ethereal all at once, Sinner Get Ready is a devastating venture of folk; Lingua Ignota once again delivers powerful emotion that is raw, unnerving, and significant.
6. Body Void – Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth
Pure dread. Pure doom (well, with a little bit of noise in there as well). Body Void is unrelenting and I adore the utterly crushing nature of Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth. In just four tracks, these folks annihilate eardrums. This is music to churn the soul, that washes over one’s skin and creates a physicality of unease. It’s madness and brutality and incredible. A work of grim distortion, space, and technical chaos. I love it and if you somehow have not checked it out – prepare yourself for one of the year’s heaviest records.
5. King Woman – Celestial Blues
I came across King Woman through their debut LP Created In the Image of Suffering. I had never heard doom performed that way before and found myself in awe of the music. Unlike the more abrasive display of doom I had heard previously, King Woman offered something more – calming, yet heavy. In their instrumentation and the vocals and lyrics of Kris Esfandiari, King Woman easily became an act I would follow moving forward. This is why when I finally got to hear Celestial Blues, I was astounded.
Let alone the record plays off of one of my favorite pieces of literature ever, Esfandiari and the band once again amaze. The intimacy of this record is remarkable, tapping into the energies that great doom is capable of, all while creating a rich, personal experience. You can check out my review of the record here.
4. Mountain Goats – Dark In Here
Having come across Transcendental Youth back in college, that record got me to fall in love with the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle is one of my all-time favorite lyricists, his words providing an immersive power to each song. With a lot of personal struggles I went through this year, I found a lot of comfort in Darnielle’s words, as well as the soothing instrumentation of the band.
I wrote a review of the album via Treble Zine, which you can read here.
3. John Carpenter with Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies – Halloween Kills OST
While my thoughts on the Halloween Kills film are sort of “meh,” there is no doubt in how much I love the soundtrack. It was a joy getting to talk with John Carpenter about the process behind the film’s music and experiencing the thrill and chills of each track. Much like Lost Themes III, the Halloween Kills OST is brimming with electronic finesse, along with touches of heavy rock instrumentation. “Unkillable” is a standout cut, making for one of the most pulse-pounding songs I’ve heard in a film.
2. Khemmis – Deceiver
I’ve been following Khemmis since their 2016 LP Hunted and have been blown away by their approach in creating doom. The epicness of their music overwhelmed me with adrenaline and melancholy, making for an unexpected duality that I find nothing short of fascinating. With their fourth LP Deceiver out, Khemmis once again strike gold, presenting a record that is packed with emotion and technical prowess. Throughout Deceiver’s runtime, listeners will find a plethora of thrills and feeling – the music exuding a sonic physicality of sorts.
Khemmis has not only released another solid album in their discography, but has crafted a banger I’ll love for the rest of my life.
1. Emma Ruth Rundle – Engine of Hell
There and then we stumble upon works that hit us in profound ways. Engine of Hell is one of those works for me. I am a relatively new fan of Emma Ruth Rundle, having discovered her music with 2018’s On Dark Horses, and then exploring the rest of her catalog afterwards. In a world where so many heavy bands try to take the approach of pummeling listeners with aggressive instrumentation or violent lyricism to cause a reaction – it’s wild what Rundle does with just her singing, a piano, and a guitar.
This record is sincerely haunting, riddled with heart and agony. It is extortionary in the existential depths it traverses; touching and painful in how much Rundle willingly opens herself to the listener. I wrote about the record for Treble Zine, and honestly, I could go on and on with praise. This is a really special record – absolutely give it a listen.
Thank you to all the readers who have been following Haunted Riffs! Stay safe, keep on headbanging, and enjoy your holidays!
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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